Download or read book The Encyclopedia of the Sri Lankan Diaspora written by Peter Reeves and published by Editions Didier Millet. This book was released on 2013 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Well over a million people of Sri Lankan origin live outside South Asia. The Encyclopedia of the Sri Lanka Diaspora is the first comprehensive study of the lives, culture, beliefs and attitudes of immigrants and refugees from this island. The volume is a joint publication between the Institute of South Asian Studies, NUS, and Editions Didier Millet. It focuses on the relationship between culture and economy in the Sri Lanka diaspora in the context of globalisation, increased transnational culture flows and new communication technologies. In addition to the geographic mapping of the Sri Lanka diaspora in the various continents, thematic chapters include topics on “long distance nationalism”, citizenship, Sinhala, Tamil and Burgher disapora identities, religion and the spread of Buddhism, as well as the Sri Lankan cultural impact on other nations.

Download or read book This Divided Island written by Samanth Subramanian and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samanth Subramanian has written about politics, culture, and history for the New York Times and the New Yorker. Now, Subramanian takes on a complex topic that touched millions of lives in This Divided Island. In the summer of 2009, the leader of the dreaded Tamil Tiger guerrillas was killed, bringing to an end the civil war in Sri Lanka. For nearly thirty years, the war's fingers had reached everywhere, leaving few places, and fewer people, untouched. What happens to the texture of life in a country that endures such bitter conflict? What happens to the country's soul? Subramanian gives us an extraordinary account of the Sri Lankan war and the lives it changed. Taking us to the ghosts of summers past, he tells the story of Sri Lanka today. Through travels and conversations, he examines how people reconcile themselves to violence, how the powerful become cruel, and how victory can be put to the task of reshaping memory and burying histories.

Download or read book A Grammar of the Sinhalese Language written by Wilhelm Geiger and published by Asian Educational Services. This book was released on 1995 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Comprehensive Grammar of the Sinhalese Language written by Abraham Mendis Gunasekara and published by Asian Educational Services. This book was released on 1999 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Human Rights Implications of the Sinhalese Tamil Conflict in Sri Lanka written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs. Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Dictionary of Proverbs of the Sinhalese Including Also Their Adages Aphorisms Apologues Apothegms Bywords Dictums Maxims Mottoes Precepts Saws and Sayings Together with the Connected Myths Legends and Folk tales written by and published by Asian Educational Services. This book was released on 2005 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Sinhalese Hand book in Roman Characters written by C. Alwis and published by . This book was released on 1880 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Assembling Ethnicities in Neoliberal Times written by Nimanthi Perera-Rajasingham and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assembling Ethnicities in Neoliberal Times: Ethnographic Fictions and Sri Lanka’s War argues that the bloody war fought between the Sri Lankan state and the separatist Tamil Tigers from 1983 to 2009 should be understood as structured and animated by the forces of global capitalism. Using Aihwa Ong’s theorization of neoliberalism as a mobile technology and assemblage, this book explores how contemporary globalization has exacerbated forces of nationalism and racism. Nimanthi Perera-Rajasingham finds that ethnographic fictions have both internalized certain colonial Orientalist impulses and critically engaged with categories of objective gazing, empiricism, and temporal distancing. She demonstrates that such fictions take seriously the task of bearing witness and documenting the complex productions of ethnic identities and the devastations wrought by warfare. To this end, Assembling Ethnicities explores colonial-era travel writing by Robert Knox (1681) and Leonard Woolf (1913); contemporary works by Michael Ondaatje, Romesh Gunesekera, Shobasakthi, Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, and Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan; and cultural festivals and theater, including vernacular performances of Euripides’s The Trojan Women and women workers’ theater. The book interprets contemporary fictions to unpack neoliberalism’s entanglements with nationalism and racism, engaging current issues such as human rights, the pastoral, Tamil militancy, immigrant lives, feminism and nationalism, and postwar developmentalism.

Download or read book Sri Lanka Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy written by Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the historical events of post-independence Sri Lanka, S. J. Tambiah analyzes the causes of the violent conflict between the majority Sinhalese Buddhists and the minority Tamils. He demonstrates that the crisis is primarily a result of recent societal stresses—educational expansions, linguistic policy, unemployment, uneven income distribution, population movements, contemporary uses of the past as religious and national ideology, and trends toward authoritarianism—rather than age-old racial and religious differences. "In this concise, informative, lucidly written book, scrupulously documented and well indexed, [Tambiah] trains his dispassionate anthropologist's eye on the tangled roots of an urgent, present-day problem in the passionate hope that enlightenment, understanding, and a generous spirit of compromise may yet be able to prevail."—Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor "An incredibly rich and balanced analysis of the crisis. It is exemplary in highlighting the general complexities of ethnic crises in long-lived societies carrying a burden of historical memories."—Amita Shastri, Journal of Asian Studies "Tambiah makes an eloquent case for pluralist democracy in a country abundantly endowed with excuses to abandon such an approach to politics."—Donald L. Horowitz, New Republic "An excellent and thought-provoking book, for anyone who cares about Sri Lanka."—Paul Sieghart, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Download or read book Still Counting the Dead written by Frances Harrison and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2012-09-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An extraordinary book. This dignified, just and unbearable account of the dark heart of Sri Lanka needs to be read by everyone." — Roma Tearne, author of Mosquito The tropical island of Sri Lanka is a paradise for tourists, but in 2009 it became a hell for its Tamil minority, as decades of civil war between the Tamil Tiger guerrillas and the government reached its bloody climax. Caught in the crossfire were hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, doctors, farmers, fishermen, nuns, and other civilians. And the government ensured through a strict media blackout that the world was unaware of their suffering. Now, a UN enquiry has called for war crimes investigation, and Frances Harrison, a BBC correspondent for Sri Lanka during the conflict, recounts those crimes for the first time in sobering, shattering detail.

Download or read book Learn Spoken Sinhala written by Sumith Wanni Arachchige and published by . This book was released on 2020-02-17 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second edition of "Learn Spoken Sinhala". This new edition has completely revamped the first edition. The second edition is easier to carry and read, and has been meticulously proofread to remove some typos and inconsistencies. Sinhala language is used and spoken by Sri Lankans, and it is the native language of the Sinhalese, the majority race (more 70% of the population) in Sri Lanka. It is more or less the lingua franca in the country. Linguistically Sinhala is considered as a language belonging to the Indo-European Language family to which English, French, Latin, Spanish, Italian, etc belong. It enjoys a proud history of thousands of years. Sri Lanka being a miraculous and pristine island situated just below the Indian peninsula in a strateically important position along the ancient Silk Road linking the west and east parts of the world. It had been a colony of Portugese, Dutch, and last the English since 1505 up to 1948 AD. Therefore, the Sinhala language has been enriched by those European languages too. Just coming out of an unfortunate terrorist battle in the nothern part of the country, it is again becoming a hub of business, global logistics, knowledge, and tourism. Already many thousands of foreigners are employed in various projects in the country. This book is the only one in the world, which teaches the Spoken Sinhala language based on a sound grammatical underpinning. If you have a working knowledge of the English language, then using this book you can easily understand Sinhala sentence structures and patterns because the book teaches Sinhala in comparison with the English. There are hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans now living abroad, and this book can be useful for them to teach their kids about the beautiful language Sinhala. Sinhala diaspora all over the world will find this useful. Furthermore linguists who research about various languages throughout the world can use this book for their studies. Now there are a lot of people coming to Sri Lanka as businesspersons and workers on various projects and missions. This book can be very useful for them too. The AUTHOR who is already a chamption in proliferation of (free) knowledge in Sinhala medium is willing to personally help and guide you in case you need further assistance and clarifications.

Download or read book The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity written by Harshana Rambukwella and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the role of cultural authenticity in the making of nations? Much scholarly and popular commentary on nationalism dismisses authenticity as a romantic fantasy or, worse, a deliberately constructed mythology used for political manipulation. The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity places authenticity at the heart of Sinhala nationalism in late nineteenth and twentieth-century Sri Lanka. It argues that the passion for the ‘real’ or the ‘authentic’ has played a significant role in shaping nationalist thinking and argues for an empathetic yet critical engagement with the idea of authenticity. Through a series of fine-grained and historically grounded analyses of the writings of individual figures central to the making of Sinhala nationalist ideology the book demonstrates authenticity’s rich and varied presence in Sri Lankan public life and its key role in understanding postcolonial nationalism in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in South Asia and the world. It also explores how notions of authenticity shape certain strands of postcolonial criticism and offers a way of questioning the taken-for-granted nature of the nation as a unit of analysis but at the same time critically explore the deep imprint of nations and nationalisms on people's lives.

Download or read book Ravanisation The Revitalisation of Ravana among Sinhalese Buddhists in Post War Sri Lanka written by Deborah de Koning and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses Ravanisation: the revitalisation of Ravana among Sinhalese Buddhists in post-war (after 2009) Sri Lanka. The Hindu Ramayana generally portrays Ravana as a cruel king. How and why, then, has Ravana gained the interest of Sinhalese Buddhists? This study takes an ethnographic perspective to answer these questions. The book discusses multiple Ravana representations that have emerged at an urban Buddhist site (the Sri Devram Maha Viharaya) and a rural site (Lakegala), and discloses how Ravanisation relates to Sinhalese Buddhist ethno-nationalism. In addition, the material, ritual, and spatial perspectives offer unique insights in the personal and local relevance of Ravana.

Download or read book Language Religion and Ethnic Assertiveness written by Kē. En. Ō Dharmadāsa and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly four decades, Sri Lanka has been the scene of an escalating ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and the Tamils, who form the largest minority. Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness traces the development of Sinhalese nationalism by paying particular attention to the Sinhala language and how it relates to Sinhalese national identity. After Sri Lanka became independent from Great Britain in 1948, an official national language had to be chosen - either "Sinhala only" or "parity of status for Sinhala and Tamil". The victory of the "Sinhala only" proposition that won in the general election of 1956 started the antagonism between the Sinhalese and the Tamils that persists to this day. Using hitherto untapped primary sources, K. N. O. Dharmadasa delineates some of the peculiar features of the linkage between state, religion, and ethnicity in traditional Sinhalese society, providing insight into a tragic conflict that has a long and turbulent history. The book has much to offer historians, political scientists, anthropologists, and sociologists of language and religion, as well as students and scholars of South Asia, postcolonialism, ethnicity, cultural identity, and conflict.

Download or read book Slave in a Palanquin written by Nira Wickramasinghe and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For hundreds of years, the island of Sri Lanka was a crucial stopover for people and goods in the Indian Ocean. For the Dutch East India Company, it was also a crossroads in the Indian Ocean slave trade. Slavery was present in multiple forms in Sri Lanka—then Ceylon—when the British conquered the island in the late eighteenth century and began to gradually abolish slavery. Yet the continued presence of enslaved people in Sri Lanka in the nineteenth century has practically vanished from collective memory in both the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. Nira Wickramasinghe uncovers the traces of slavery in the history and memory of the Indian Ocean world, exploring moments of revolt in the lives of enslaved people in the wake of abolition. She tells the stories of Wayreven, the slave who traveled in the palanquin of his master; Selestina, accused of killing her child; Rawothan, who sought permission for his son to be circumcised; and others, enslaved or emancipated, who challenged their status. Drawing on legal cases, petitions, and other colonial records to recover individual voices and quotidian moments, Wickramasinghe offers a meditation on the archive of slavery. She examines how color-based racial thinking gave way to more nuanced debates about identity, complicating conceptions of blackness and racialization. A deeply interdisciplinary book with a focus on recovering subaltern resistance, Slave in a Palanquin offers a vital new portrait of the local and transnational worlds of the colonial-era Asian slave trade in the Indian Ocean.

Download or read book Sinhala written by Dileep Chandralal and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sinhala is one of the official languages of Sri Lanka and the mother tongue of over 70% of the population. Outside Sri Lanka it is used among immigrant populations in the U.K., North America, Australia and some European and Middle Eastern countries. As for the genetic relation, it belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. Although the earliest surviving literature in Sinhala dates from the 8th century A.D., its written tradition has traced a longer path of more than 2,000 years. Among the major topics covered in this volume are the writing system, phonology, morphology, grammatical constructions and discourse and pragmatic aspects of Sinhala. Written in a clear and lucid style, the book presents a rich sampling of the data and serves a useful typological reference. Therefore this is required reading for not only linguists and Sinhala specialists but also to anyone interested in language, thought, and culture.

Download or read book The Story of the Sinhalese from the Most Ancient Times Up to the End of the Mahavansa Or Great Dynasty written by John M. Senaveratna and published by Asian Educational Services. This book was released on 1997 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From The Most Ancient Times Upto The End Of The Mahavansa Or Great Dynasty Vijaya To Maha Sena, B.C. 543 To A.D. 302.